End And Begin
by Zagzagel
Summary: After not stopping Lucifer's virus via Pestilence, Dean and Sam have resolved to live and die free. For Sam it has become moment to moment with the regret he carries. [Wincest]
1. Chapter 1

**A/N - This is an end verse style story. I will not post warnings on this past this point as some may give plot spoilers. Rating is for language and some mild gore.**

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Sam was pressed up hot behind him, arm sprawled across his hip, mouth probably slack enough to let in a whole army of spiders. He could imagine that relaxed face with ridiculous hair flung out like some spastic halo.

A weary ache with a familiarity earned through years of fights made him almost believe that there would a parking lot outside. That they were in a room that had a shower with questionable black growths in the grout and strange stains that screamed 'don't touch' on the carpet. Some shit continental breakfast waiting with limp donuts and stale coffee that may or may not have been out for three days.

Didn't matter if the sheets were a scratchy mess or his bladder was bursting while his stomach tried to eagerly munch itself. In the dark, he could dream of normal.

A mouth against his shoulder, teeth dragging across his skin.

"You fucking cuddled me, bitch."

"Morning to you too." Sam's breaths, hot pulses against him and he knew he couldn't roll over. They'd be late if he did that. "I'll try to stop threatening your masculinity."

Sam was laughing in that silent 'my belly hurts from your stupidity' way of his as Dean elbowed him. Somehow he got untangled from the mess of them and hated the cold under his feet, fingers fumbling with the camp lantern. At least the pitch black meant nothing had invaded in the night. Or at least that the reinforcements on the windows had held which was always good morning news.

He risked a look on his way to take a piss, Sam all amused and mussed that burned hot through him and he told himself no. Too much to take care of today to be lounging in bed.

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"Supplies are starting to dip," Risa was telling him as he leaned against a truck, the main drag a chewed up mess of semi-mud tracks.

He wanted to remind her this crap always dipped. People using it tended to cause that but he gnawed his bottom lip instead. They were better at the self-sufficient, making do with less which meant fewer of these trips. Less hazard for his people out there and made the droves of the mindless wander off. When you're a murdering lumbering mass of meat, he guessed, it got boring waiting.

"How long?"

She shrugged, hair falling back without thought. "Looking like max we can wait is ten days."

"Fine."

She was ambling back in, all pretty curves that he would have wanted in a different life. He rolled his head back up to look at the sky, finally fucking clear after the heavy rains they had been getting. Not that it helped the layers of muck that clung to his boots and jeans. Stuff seemed to get everywhere. He was surprised to not find it under their clothes.

There was little noise in these last few minutes left of the rest break. Sam, vocal brat that he was, demanded that he use ever damn lost second of it.

' _We have to have joy if we're doing this keep going till the end, die free thing,'_ his brother had said. ' _If we don't have that then it's not living and what's the point?'_

Dean smiled, still staring up at the sky. That night, that had been a good night. He could still see the way his brother had hustled him up against the wall. Pushing, insistent, nostrils flaring with heat burning in those eyes; his hands so tight and taunt on his shoulders that they had hurt and Dean hadn't been able to move. Couldn't understand how Sam could be so big that he swallowed the world.

' _I need, Dean.'_

' _What?'_

' _You.'_

It still made a knot form in his belly. Guilt had been deep and dirty, lashing him down at how much he had screwed up for years. It was still trying to live in there, terror that he had broken his baby brother; kept breaking him until Sam burned through it, through him. Like his own damn personal sun scorching it out, over and over until it was just them.

His brother had sunk his hand in deep to hold the little fragments that were him together in his giant fist, keeping him Dean.

And if he stood around thinking like this he'd be finding his brother to go rut against and that was both embarrassing _and_ unproductive.

He pushed himself off the truck and walked down a ways past a couple of the cabins. Dean had been happy this place hadn't come haunted or stalked by something. The last of his sanity would break if he was trapped in a teen slasher flick. A figure sat on one of the porches, clothes working on unraveling since basic sewing hadn't been a heavenly priority apparently.

"Hey Cas."

"Dean." His friend's eyes were closed, black hair abused by the breeze. "Glad it finally stopped raining."

"Yeah, well it helps the whole attempt at being farmer John," Dean answered flopping down on the stair. "We'll have to go out for supplies in a few days. See what we can rustle up, what's left to take."

"I will prepare then."

"Woah, didn't say we were going right this minute, Cas."

"I know you," a faint smile was on that face now, the closest Cas ever got to looking amused. "You want to be out there. Weed through the overgrowth, so to speak."

Dean cleared his throat, hitting the heel of his boot against the back of the step, mud in thick dry flakes falling in time. "Yeah, well, when you say it like that it makes me sound all homicidal."

"You have always been a man of action."

He snorted, something undignified and too loud. The kind of noise that he'd get a look for from Sam as a quiet testament to his long standing suffering. But it was true. Killing those things out there, checking to see if demons were close and ganking their asses before they could go report back to big daddy monster was freeing. It made him useful.

Otherwise, without a way to stop anything, to be able to slow this shit down he would have gotten more unhinged. Which probably would have consisted of a troubling bloodbath killing spree before screaming 'yes' to the sky while lighting flares.

Well, unless Sam found his ass and drug him back to tie him to something substantial till he got a grip.

Cas was looking at him, studying him and he knew the fallen angel wanted to point out the obvious. That whether or not it helped they needed to fight, drag their heels and refuse because if it was all going to die anyway than why go willingly?

It was so damn meaningless at times it ached.

"Can't wait around all day here," he said getting up, clapping Cas' shoulder. "Shit needs doing."

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The sky had a burnt out hue with smears of orange and red at its edge when his brother grabbed him and pulled him around a corner, pushing him hard against rough wood.

"This is how people get stabbed, Sam."

"Don't care," his brother muttered before he just ruined him. Mouth demanding and claiming him like it had always been his. Dean pushed his hands up into that hair. Held them pressed all firm together and Sam's always so hot, it feels like he's about to combust, burn completely to ashes when they're like this.

"Not leaving," Sam was whispering, biting his jaw, teeth skating down his neck between warm lips and Dean wanted to complain about bruises. That they'd bloom up and tattle that he'd been frisky. "Never leaving you again."

Clever mouth was still working at his neck, fingers tugging at the neckline of his shirt, tongue lapping at the hollow and Dean barely managed to keep from moving his hips. He must look like a slack jawed yokel out here, legs all spread, mouth hanging open wide enough to catch a swarm of flies.

Then Sam was kissing him, pulling him up and back and he can't make a sound as Sam just sucks it right out. Rips free everything he could say in this moment and drinks it. Strips out all those ideas of being bad and clears them away, washing him out, blurring all the lines of where he ends and Sam begins.

"Not that I'm complaining but what brought on the show?" he managed when Sam finally calmed a bit, pulling back.

Sam's hands where on his face, tilting it up because his brother had been fed too much growing up. It was his fault. Who would have thought Spaghettios and Lucky Charms would congeal in that stomach and cause a growth spurt? A thumb was circling on his cheek, Sam with his serious face and Dean wanted to protest.

"All I ever wanted was you," his brother breathed and Dean knew it was true. Could feel it sink down, carved into his bones, etched in every fiber of him. "I should have told you that so damn long ago. I should have fucking realized. I'm sorry I'm such a goddamn coward."

"You aren't, it's alright Sammy," because that was all there was to say and he barely trusted himself out here. A bell was rung, work over and dinner begun and his muscles burned from the day's work. "You got me. I promise, you got me."

Rain started to fall again but he didn't care. All he wanted was in front of him wet or not. He felt that need burst through him, trying to drown him as he gave in.

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The cold was bitter, sharp taste that only frost had on his tongue but he couldn't light a fire. Fire was human and the things hunting them looked for that. Signs of humans were dangerous, invited things he didn't have ammo enough for anymore.

A weird sort of luck had hit him here; a house with intact windows and a propane heater tucked away in the kitchen. Strong scent of fuel, sloshing to show it still had some life. Dried blood was caked into his knuckles, cracking and flaking like bits of dust as he made it safe. Even if it didn't hold in the end it was just for a little while. A small light was in his hand, trying to keep away from the glass that had had the drapes torn down. Grooves of claws in the walls that went with the blood splatter; the broken splintered bones scattered and silent all over the floor.

The things that had come through before them didn't care for cans and he found a couple. Everything was shaking, drained and feeling just gone. He had to eat as he pried one open, taking mindless mouthfuls of something pretending to be chili. Found spare salt in the cupboards and candles he wouldn't dare light.

Metallic taste in his mouth as he held the small flashlight in his lips and teeth. Peeled back strands of scalp, the glints of something that was designed to be covered. Face cut open, white shine of bone. Narrow tracts cut through the shirt into flesh that was plastered solidly with blood and grime on skin so pale they almost glowed against it.

He wanted to scream, to shake that still body and ask why he had thrown himself in front of that attack. Why had he thrown himself away like that?

Instead he cleaned the wounds. Tried to put things together as well as possible, getting rid of what was hanging and unneeded. That body still unlike the first time he had touched where it all convulsed. Teeth tight, chin snapped up, backs of the hands and toes tipped in, muscles rigid and unyielding. As ominous as it was, it was comforting that maybe pain wasn't so close anymore.

His weapon was a solid weight at his back and he tried not to touch it. He could end this.

He didn't know if that was right.

"Love you, never leaving" he whispered, kissing the corner of that mouth. _Even if you are a crazy bastard._

Musty blankets were heaped in the corner of an old bedroom and he tucked them around his brother. Kept away the chill as it started to rain again, something leaking in a distant part of the house that dripped out of time with the rest. Then he leaned against the wall, tucking his hands under his shirt, trying not to be cold. So little fuel and it was going to get worse, he had to wait just a little bit; the terror that it wouldn't work creeping over his skin.

Finally, a click of the switch, a spark and the thing switched on. He crawled under the blankets trying not to cry at something so friggin' simple.

"We got heat again, Dean," he whispered, his brother's shallow breaths the only measure of life. "Just for a little while. Sorry it's not better."

There was no answer. There was never going to be an answer. All the things that they could have been, could have had were lost. He'd never know if Dean would have let him touch, would have let him know what he felt like outside of holding torn skin together to stich. Wanting to believe that maybe he would have, that maybe he wouldn't have just left.

He hadn't just burned bridges. He had incinerated entire metropolitan areas of his brother's heart, scorched whole continents of it with his choices. Blacked charred ruins as he tore away, laughing with singed hands if his brother asked him to come back; Sam blindly believing his way was better. Until those choices boiled over and left him with something broken in a collapsing world.

Yet his brother had still come for him, had still dragged him through surviving as the last little pieces that Sam hadn't destroyed held on for something, anything. Protecting him even after it was his hands that shredded and twisted that wreckage the most.

And Sam had been too afraid to speak, too fucking yellow bellied to tell his brother because Dean leaving was just too terrifying. So he had kept his brother while refusing to love him correctly, like he was some sort or permanent fixture guaranteed for life.

"All I ever wanted was you," his arm wrapped around that broken form. "I should have told you that so damn long ago. I should have fucking realized it. I'm sorry I'm such a goddamn coward."

Soon it would be time to get up, to make sure Dean was clean. He tried not to think of Castiel left behind, screaming at him to take his brother and go as the mindless monsters of Lucifer's making closed in. One more to count on their long list of bodies left in their wake.

 _I don't know what to do,_ he wanted to say but couldn't _. I don't know if this is better or worse for you. I don't know if I'm hurting you._

The silence was suffocating outside of that breathing, trying to drag him under because Dean should never be this quiet. Could never be this quiet. His brother was always loud, banging and charging. Dropping his boots on the floor in lavish displays or tossing bags with loud snaps against hard surfaces. Even upset and glowering Dean could manage to scowl loudly. His car was loud, his laugh was loud, everything that was Dean had always been loud because he was life.

"Love you, never leaving," Sam whispered, running his fingers along the uninjured portions of his brother's face. Trying to map it, learn it, remember it no matter what came for him at the end.

There wasn't anything left to do but love him.

Nothing stirred, the quiet sound of the heater clicking in the dark keeping steady time.


	2. Chapter 2

He woke up gasping, almost flailing in the quasi darkness of early morning and managed to get himself under control. Dean's breathing had gotten worse during his impromptu nap and Sam knew it was close. That body was about to put up the 'closed forever' sign and he kissed the cheek that wasn't grooved with wounds before getting up.

There was a pressure in his temples, some kind of terrible foreboding and he knew they were coming. They had been close already, it was why they had been running, how they got to here. Salt lines were refreshed, sigils and wards up and he loaded his weapons. Another wet sound of too little air dragged out and he pressed his face against his brother's shoulder, soaking in everything that was Dean.

"I won't ever stop loving you."

A few more then the ultimate release, the hush of the abrupt finality of that moment almost crushed him. Sam kissed that cheek again then leaned back up, wiping dampness from his face with dirty sleeves.

"Okay," he whispered swallowing as he picked up the shotgun, its strap frayed but holding as he got himself situated. "Okay."

Silence for a couple minutes, the heater spent in the early morning. Gun in his lap, Ruby's knife tucked under his thigh as they sat in a devil's trap. Theirs' in the corner overlapped with the big one that took up most of the room. Made it a little harder to reach them along with all the salt, made it so they had to at least work to drag him off.

Sam hoped at least one of them was stupid, that one of them just came right for him.

A rattle of glass and he tried to keep his hands steady. He had limited supplies, would do no good to miss. Scratching around the outside, something sniffing and always hungry.

"Sammy." Her voice was nearby, close to the window and Sam pressed his back against the wall.

The glass burst inwards shattering and blowing the salt free of its line. He turned his head from the airborne shards before raising his gun up.

"Father will be so happy I found you," she sang still outside. "He's anxious to unite with you to bring us paradise."

He wanted to yell back some retort, to tell Meg that her daddy's paradise was the destruction of demons right after he was done with the humans. That Lucifer couldn't give a rat's ass about anything but himself. But he held them in, patiently waiting for her to come.

The sounds of claws on the floor, scrabbling along the fragments of the window and Sam swallowed. The pre-dawn light offered a little but not very much in way of seeing things. It was enough though when he saw a can knocked over and he fired. A terrible snarl, sound of crunching glass under magnificent weight.

"Not a good way to make friends," Meg called from outside, her voice fainter through the ringing in his ears. He could picture her out there, hands in her pockets, face with a smirk. Thinking she'd won which she had but he wasn't going to give that to her.

A hot fetid puff of air, the hound was near, skirting the edge of his demon trap covered in salt and Sam thought hysterically that it was good to know that it made hell hounds pause. If he had any chance of making it out of here alive he'd tell whoever he could about it.

The next puff and he fired. Blood, black ochre spilling from nothing along with howl that racked off the walls told him it was a much better hit.

"Aw, poor Jelly Bean. I don't think he liked that, Sammy."

"Why don't you come inside Meg?" He was surprised how calm his voice was as she appeared across the room from him. He fired again, her head thrown back as she laughed, too far and hidden in the shadows to guarantee a good shot.

"Did poor Deanie-weanie die on you? Leave you all alone? I can tell you that father will never leave you, Sam. Will never let you go. All you have to do is say one little word. Promise I won't have too much fun with you first."

"No."

She vanished, some distant sound in another room and the floor began to groan. A chasm opening up and running towards him and Dean, racing to splinter the boards and tear at the traps. There was so little time left when it all stopped.

Everything just stopped

A thump, something heavy hitting the floor and the rush of something pushing past, being forced back. Slow plodding footsteps come closer barely audible in the white noise of his head. A man, clothes torn and blood splattered leaned against the doorway, something heavy in his step as a glinting weapon swung by his side.

"Cas!" Sam couldn't believe, wouldn't believe it but those eyes fell on them, him and what had been Dean, the meat that had been his brother's home as the fallen angel came forward swaying a bit but still steady. So many questions, starting with how he was alive, that he hadn't wanted to leave him at the ambush point no matter how much the angel had screamed at him to go.

"Not dead yet," Cas said dropping to his knee beside them, taking in Dean's lifeless body and the grief that had been muted by shock and the attack was ripe now, trying to force itself through him.

"I couldn't – I tried to take care of him. I didn't –" his words are all jumbled and tangled as he tried to find them. The fallen angel took in their surroundings coming clearer in the brightening morning, the extent of the traps, the markings over everything, the salt everywhere. A hand was on his shoulder.

"It's not your fault. She was prideful and greedy coming alone but the hounds will be back soon. We must go."

Everything was stiff and stale in him as he nodded, got things together. He would have to leave his brother here in this rat trap and there was something sacrilegious having him here with Meg's corpse. There was so little left of them and they hadn't started out with much. Checking his brother's pockets he found mom's wedding band secreted away and he almost lost it. No matter how cold that body was getting he wanted to just curl up and lay here with him.

Moving fast, they looked through the cupboards taking food, supplies. Water wasn't running but there were two full jugs. Cas found a truck in the garage. Something with useable gas and large enough to just plow through any infected that might be lingering out there. Just a handful of minutes but it felt like an eternity when Cas placed something in his hand.

"I know what you want. Hurry. There is little time."

Sam went back in, cold leaking through the breeched window and he knew he only had seconds here. There wasn't enough time anywhere to tell his brother what he wanted to say. He kissed his brother's cheek, placing the partial bottle of whiskey that Dean had been overjoyed to find two days ago by the body.

Flipping the cap he spread some of the lighter fluid. His brother's trademark lighter was in his hand, small flame burning bright and he was numb and completely consumed.

"I'll keep saying no."

He dropped the flame, fire catching on the torn floor, searing up as he went back to Cas.


	3. Chapter 3

They had run out of gas two hours in. Sam's weird ass luck still held in all the ways it didn't matter but still made a difference. A car empty with almost a full tank and Sam would have taken it for the four wheel drive if it hadn't been one of those new kinds. One that demanded special keys to get the engine to start so they were siphoning gas.

"I'm sorry Cas." He meant it in ways he wasn't even sure of yet. The fallen angel tilted his head still learning the ways of humans, of being afraid of sleep and not liking the bodily demands. A hand was on his shoulder.

"He would be proud."

Sam choked back something that was still threatening to overtake him as they got in and kept going. He wanted somewhere away from cities and people and the things they turned into. He wanted somewhere that they wouldn't be found for a while, away from the stench of death.

Castiel made no arguments, staring blankly out the window.

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It was the silence that was the worst. Missing Dean's singing along with the same damn music that he knew so well he could recite it backwards. The way Dean liked to move, all that energy too much to be contained so he was always going. The way he could laugh when he irritated Sam, some stupid thing or knowing Sam hated a song so he just turned it up more. Who smirked and grinned and made it his mission to be as frustrating as possible.

Creeping under his skin until all he was could only be Dean.

"Do you ever think," Sam started, swallowed back a lump, "about Dean being a ghost?"

Castiel made a quiet noise that Sam was sure qualified as laughter. "Your brother has a penchant for doing impossible things."

The image of Dean as the happy phantom skipping around the world while heaven's armies chased behind made him finally smile.

 **XX**

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Sam was fairly sure that if Cas wasn't there he'd be talking like Dean was. Probably carrying on whole conversations and answering and being completely insane. Hell, if Lucifer figured out a way to saunter up looking like his brother Sam would be done, crawling and begging and just desperate to be near.

"You should eat," Cas said, passing over a protein bar of dubious quality.

Dried fruit wasn't a substitute for the real thing he decided, pulling the wrapper back. He tried not to miss produce too much, thinking of how Dean claimed the only good vegetables where the ones that came as flimsy offerings on his burgers.

Sam drove on, the small relief of having something to focus on. They used back roads that weren't choked with abandoned cars, through fields arid with their owners dead. Trying to avoid anything that once had humans unless they needed something.

Trucks were good for hauling large amounts of supplies at least. Even if it was all crap from houses they ransacked and probably really unhealthy. At least they had found vitamins so maybe they wouldn't have some deficiency breakdown here.

"You are sleeping less."

Sam nodded. Lucifer's pushed into his dreams, the entire front of understanding abandoned for the slow crawl into insanity. Of whispers that it was over, that his brother was gone.

"There's only small populations out here," Sam said, not wanting to talk about Lucifer ever. "I mean, the desert climate's not great but less demons and –"

"Smaller populations of infected to deal with for supplies," Castiel finished. "I agree. The best we can do now is to keep you from his hands."

It was a terrible truth, and Sam swallowed back the words as he looked up. The night was vast and endless and he wished he was a star plastered up there. Something cold and unmoving, something that refused to feel. Something that didn't know the sensation of numb devastation that was eating him like a fine meal.

The fallen angel put something into his mouth, eyes sliding closed and Sam smiled. They had found good chocolate a couple of days ago and Cas was determined to make it last.

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It finally happened, he was breaking down.

They were leaning against the side of the truck that had the shade, hundreds miles of nothing lacing its patient fingers all through him.

His body shuddered, silent as he felt the tears come. There was a hand on him and he saw it in Castiel's eyes, the wet shine and he was gone. Fist in his mouth as he rocked back and forth, clutching at Cas, pulling him close as the fallen angel buried his head against him not making a sound. Boots kicked up puffs of dust as he uselessly moved his legs like they could run to some different future; one where this never happened.

Sometimes it felt like Dean was a ghost settled in his bones, something that he rode around with picking away at the joints till they gave.

"I forget at times," Cas was saying. His voice almost inaudible against the wind rushing through the open windows as Sam drove the long expanses of nothing that wound through the desert like a string. "When I wake up I expect to see him, complaining and eating. Until I remember and it's losing him all over again."

His hands tightened on the wheel, turning a bloodless white because he's not sure he can say it. That he misses all the tiny little things that snapped together to make Dean. Or that he missed impossible things, things they never had. Things he still longed for like sleeping all happy and tangled in Dean.

Castiel was looking at him now, eyes glittering in the harsh sun so brightly it made the blue in his eyes explode. Bottomless wells of grief and loss and he made himself look away, pay attention to keeping them on the black ribbon carved into the parched earth.

"If you ever want to tell me know I will never judge you."

A nod, that was all Sam can manage and when he chanced a glance his friend was back looking out the window, wind assaulting his hair, whipping it into crooked angles.

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It wasn't so cold right now, Cas curled up in the front seat to stay out of the wind. It was wild and expansive, more so at night; like nothing had boundaries in this free form infinity. Soon they'd run out of water and have to make a choice on whether to die of thirst or risk another town. It had been too close last time. The wound, a long furious rent down Cas' back, still fiery and swollen from where he had stitched the frayed skin together.

When Cas was sleeping it felt as if someone had reached in and ripped out his guts. Like he was holding his belly, trying to keep the last of himself in as he leaked all over the ground until there was little left.

Sitting on the back bumper, pressed up against the chilled metal of the tailgate, the want was just too strong and he slid his hand down. He hoped Cas was still out like a light. Hoping the fallen angel wasn't all the way dead, though maybe it would be a mercy if he slid out unaware.

Somehow he was ready despite all the death and blood and just pure grief that chewed more out of him every day. He tried not to think about Dean, the way he had moved or the loud brashness of him. He tried not to think of what those hands might of felt like with their papery dryness and callouses drifting over his skin. Of how they could have moved together, the scent of them hanging heavy in the air.

He bit into his hand when his body went over the edge, stopping a sound that was something between a groan and a sob. He knew he was weeping. Dean would have given him a pitying look, said some smart ass thing about fondling himself like a girl.

He got himself cleaned up, checked to see that Cas was breathing and alright. Not that he should ever have to sleep, to have something stripped of him he had had his whole damn existence because of them.

 _Think of something else, anything else but these things,_ he commanded himself.

It didn't work.

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"Why do you stay?"

They were huddled together, the night punishingly cold as Cas shivered trying to get warm under the layers of blankets. The sides of the truck bed and tarp cover kept out the brunt of the wind, limiting the sand and cold that blew around them. The cost of being a hundred miles from anything, of not being near something that could tell.

"You are my friend, Sam. I will be with you as you continue to say no."

"I won't break a promise to him again."

"I miss him."

Sam pulled him closer, Castiel wrapping an arm that wasn't warm enough around him, face cool against his neck. They waited for dawn, to see if heaven would grow tired of waiting today and just attacked.

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The wound was oozing infectious gooey pus; the smell alone heralding the final outcome. Castiel's eyes were glassy, hands working the blanket he laid on between his fingers as if he had managed to be partially somewhere else for a while. Somewhere that didn't have Sam trying to scrap out dead skin and foul smelling stick determined to grow inside him.

Whatever had gotten in there had gotten in deep, weaving a home for itself in his friend. Sam knew it was in his blood, the pallor despite all the sun they got. Those eyes a more diffuse shade of blue betraying the constant excruciating burden of just existing. Nothing seemed to work, and Sam wanted to punch something. He wanted to ridicule himself because what good was swiping what miniscule amount of drugs they could find if this is the result they got.

Cleaning, disinfecting, clean bandages, pills taken and water coaxed down with food. Yet that body grew weaker, trembling under the weight of just itself.

Cas had said no when he wanted to move them somewhere with a less brutal sun.

"What do you want to do, Cas?" His voice was scarcely audible, sweat coating both of them. He shifted, jeans caked with dust and the never ending feeling of just always dirty. "Do you want me –"

"I'm not trying to leave you, Sam," his voice uneven, eyes more focused now. Sam shuffled over so Cas could see him without having to move.

"I know." He squeezed a hand that was clutching the blanket, the skin clammy and too warm. "I don't want you to suffer and we're losing this one."

They were losing everything.

"I keep hoping for a miracle. That my Father shows up, that Michael does something," the words are raspy and Sam pushes the hair out of that face with a damp cloth. "Don't let them take your soul willingly."

"I won't," he promised since that was the only thing he could actually promise.

Castiel was trying to push himself up, Sam grabbed him before his arms buckled from simple exertion. Fade blue eyes, ribs like steps up that washed out chest with the Enochian tattoo a brilliant black smudge along his side. An arm slung around Sam's neck, a small fire cutting through his skin.

"Not laying down," the voice rasped, fingers clutching at him.

"Okay, Cas."

Somehow his voice was steady when the rest felt so undone, the weight of his weapon cold in his hand even as the world already felt lit up. Sam ran his free hand through that unruly hair, kissed his temple. Castiel's face slid into something that was peace as the shot was lined up.

"Love you, Cassie."

 **XX**

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 **XX**

The few times he was able to dream without Lucifer polluting his thoughts he dreamed of Dean. The way he sat, the way he laughed all full and big and just there. Sam wanted to touch, to tell his brother it was alright, that everything would be okay.

Sam tried to count all the freckles spread out across those cheeks each time before he woke up, face pressed into Castiel's shirt. Feeling like all the filaments that made him Sam were blowing away.

 **XX**

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 **XX**

Tongue slide over his cracked lips, barely providing relief as he stared at the inside of his eyelids. Dean was behind him, somehow they both were wedged along the truck's bench seat, his brother's arm curled around his waist. Water would have to be gotten soon before it got dangerously low. Out here in the heat the bodies in the streets just mummified, couldn't even decay properly so they sat on the earth unable to join it.

Sometimes it felt like eyes were watching, that not everything was all the way dead yet.

"It's alright, Sammy."

"He says he can help me, make it go away," he murmured, voice cracking from disuse. "Make me go away."

Dean shifted, nestling more into him like he a well fed cat. Sleepiness from the heat and fatigue ate along his consciousness, made it crumble and disintegrate.

"You're never here when I wake up."

There wasn't an answer, only that press along his skin like fine static as he slipped from the world for a while.

 **XX**

* * *

 **XX**

They had found him finally. A whole little gaggle of demons staring, teeth glinting and he wondered if Lucifer even had a vessel still or if he had burned like a sun through Nick.

His muscles ached as he palmed Ruby's knife in one hand, Cas' sword in the other. From the looks of hunger on their faces he knew this wasn't going to be fast. Some sort of retribution against him for running and hiding himself away out here. He raised his eyes up, staring at the vibrant sky that was powder blue and empty.

 _Michael, if you can hear me and if you haven't destroyed my brother can you tell him I love him, that I fought to the end?_

There wasn't a lot of power left in him, but he hoped as they came closer, eyes black and ravenous, he could take a couple down. He would keep the promises made until everything that made him Sam was ripped away.

The first one lunged when there was a sound close by as his world turned to white.

 **XX**

* * *

 **XX**

They were stopped as he sleepily opened his eyes, trying to stretch and see against the glare of the Texas summer all around them.

"Are we already –" his words cut off when he saw he was alone and panic began to flood as his own door was open. Hand already on his gun when he saw who was standing there. "Dean?"

"Seriously? Your heaven is riding around in Baby?"

There was something pleased, pushing a faint smile at his brother's mouth as he got out, confused as if waking from something far deeper than sleep. They were in the middle of the road, highway stretched out for miles of the flat landscape. The sky so big it felt like it was threatening to swallow him if he reached up too high.

"Dean?" He felt like he weighed nine hundred pounds as he staggered and pushed himself against the Impala before he collapsed.

"Sammy, hey man, it's okay. Everything's alright." Dean's hands are on him now and they can't be because he's dead. "He said you'd be a bit whacked out at first."

"He?" But Sam already knew. Oh, he knew and he was pissed as he saw that shifty look Dean got when he did something questionable. "What did you do?"

"He didn't get it at first Sam. I don't think he understood what his Dad was asking."

Sam wanted to scream at the sky that wasn't real, that couldn't be real at the thought of his brother being brutalized all over again after everything. That he should have been here, with the version of Sam that he wanted and craved for. Not bent over and desecrated and a hand was in his hair, holding fast.

"Sammy, you did good." Dean's breaths were hot against him in the noonday sun, the glare rebounding hard enough off the Impala's black sheen that it was almost hard to see. "I saw, Sam. We saw."

"You can't – " and his voice fails him as his face heats with shame, something low and primal urging him to run.

"I heard you," Dean was saying, face too close, mouth at his ear as Sam listened. That voice telling him of what his brother had dreamed of while dying, of seeing his memories after they grabbed him.

He couldn't start this. He didn't know how to start this.

"Sammy."

Dean's mouth was on him, pushing and wanting. It demanded and Sam gave, just melted into it because it was far better than he had ever been able to imagine. All Dean, it had always been Dean who was his beginning and end, his heaven and hell. The press of cloth between his fingers as he held on, terrified it would slip away.

"What did you do?" he got out again when Dean finally let him go.

"There's none of that paradise crap. The world is, you know, scotch taped back together. Minus the devil – " Dean's voice trailed off and Sam got it.

Sam swallowed down words about Cas, that wound raw and screaming still.

"Michael helped us?"

"He nattered on about always doing Dad's will," Dean waved a hand before it came to rest on his shoulder, a weight that he didn't even know he had missed. "What is right and good and blah blah blah. You know how they are."

Something bit deep in him, sharp fear bisecting him as he held onto his brother, twisted his fingers in that shirt.

"I don't think this is real," he whispered because it was so much of what he wanted. What Lucifer had sang to him in his sleep, told him that he would grant if Sam came to him and he wasn't sure anymore if he had or hadn't.

Dean was watching him, eyes half closed from the brilliance of the day and Sam waited for him to evaporate like a mirage in the pounding heat.

"It's going to be okay, Sammy," his brother said quietly. "I'd promise it was real but I don't think it would make much of a difference."

Sam shook his head because it wouldn't. It wouldn't take away that haunting feeling that flowed in him, growing more relentlessly certain until it felt like a wide current about to flood over.

"Let's not have this chick moment out here, huh? I'm blistering."

A sharp thwack on his back, Dean making his way around the front of the Impala and Sam crumpled into the passenger seat. The smell of the car, the way his brother wore his lopsided grin, happy to just be here with him. It felt solid and true but it was too much; too much good when all they had ever been served with was bad rotting from the inside out.

Sam attempted a smile, wondering if his brother had said yes. Wondering if he was currently still being worn.

"Not going anywhere, Sam," Dean was saying sliding over, punishing mouth pushing open his own, balancing finely between too much and rapture. The taste, feel, smell of Dean was all around him and he wanted to sink into it, just give himself over right here as his brother pulled back. "It's going to be okay."

Sam nodded, almost missing the soft 'Love ya, Sammy' that Dean got out as the engine turned over. He said it back, just as low letting it slide over him. He could pretend, maybe not forever but for a while. Maybe he could get so lost that it just wouldn't matter anymore.

Dean was driving, singing with glances thrown his way, to see where this road led.

* * *

 **End Note - There really is no concrete way to read this ending of whether or not Sam's views are correct. I personally prefer the happier less bleak version.**

 **Thank you for taking the time read!**


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